Torpy Park Controversy Prompts Town Meeting

A special town hall meeting is taking place Tuesday evening in Minocqua, regarding the fate of a group of trees in Torpy Park.

The Minocqua Lions Club wants to build a new shelter in Torpy Park, and in the process remove about a dozen white pines estimated to be over a hundred years old.

Many locals are up in arms about the plan, and have been contacting town officials and spreading the word through social media. They say they like the atmosphere the trees provide, and say the trees are a vestige of old growth forest in the Northwoods.

Steve Peterson, superintendent of the Northern Highland American Legion state forest, says he has no opinion as to whether the trees should go or stay. But he says there is often confusion about what old growth really means.

“These may be old trees but that is not old growth. Old growth is a structure of a forest, where there’s a variety of tree ages, there’s big logs on the floor of the forest, there’s brush, a continuous canopy. There are a lot of other elements to old growth other than just having old trees.”

Petersen thinks the trees in question would likely not survive beyond another decade or two because of park conditions.

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Electors in the town of Minocqua next week will decide whether the town will purchase a piece of prime real estate next to Torpy Park.

Town Chair Mark Hartzheim says they've been talking with the property owner who has set a floor price of $300,000. Hartzheim says the property owner approached the town. The property is about 26,000 square feet and has a building on it which he says is beyond renovation.

Hartzheim says the annual town meeting next week enables citizens to decide whether the town should go ahead with the sale....

State foresters are set to begin a three-year timber management project in the Laona School Forest. DNR officials and Laona students gathered Wednesday to kick off the project.

DNR Forestry Supervisor Craig Williams says the project will benefit forest health. He says some of the trees in the oldest school forest in the country are aging, and are being affected by invasive buckthorn.

State Senator Tom Tiffany is supporting Oneida County’s call for increased cutting in the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest.

The county board passed a resolution Tuesday asking federal officials and members of Congress to bring the national forest harvest up to its allowable level. Senator Tiffany says after widespread clear-cutting a hundred years ago, the pendulum has now swung too far the other way.